Where I am now

5 Things I've learned so far on this course:

•  Photoshop: I'm so much more competent than wen I started. At first I could only use the clone tool and basic functions like cropping but now I can produce illustrations that I'm happier with that use photoshop for everything except the initial line work.
• To use thumbs all the time:  I've learned how useful they are and how they can quickly help me work out composition and to help me plan what to actually draw.
• To not immediately settle on the first idea: While I may often return to my first idea I've found by generating a few more I can find better ones or improve my initial  one by merging some of the new ideas.
• To not limit how I work: I've learnt that having different methods of working opens up the possibilities of how to do an illustration, which is particularly good as different methods can convey different meanings.
• That line quality is important: I've learnt this simple rule and it does show in an illustration when you've payed attention to the line quality.

5 Things I want to know more about:

• Photoshop: while I have learned a lot more than I knew I'd like to know more ( but that's more about practice)
• Narrative: I want to know more about how to show narrative without text.
• How to make a good book: I'm really interested n children's books and I'd like to do some more work on books.
• Composition: I'm still not great at composition and I'd like to know more about what I can do to improve it.
• Backgrounds: I'm terrible at backgrounds and I'd like to know more about what I can do to improve upon them.

5 Strengths:

• Characters: I think that my characters are a strength as they're what enjoy doing most so I've put quite a bit of work into them.
• Colours: I think I'm quite good at choosing what colours go well together though they do just tend to be based on what colours I like at the time.
• Dip pen: I think that the way I draw works well with dip pen.
• Shading: I think that the way I pay attention to the shading in a drawing really improves them.
• Line drawings: I think that I'm pretty good at doing the line work in my work but need to improve upon turning a drawing that'd be in a older children's book into a finished illustration.

5 things I want to improve:

• watercolours: I really love the colour and texture that watercolours create but I'm not any good with them myself.
• narrative: I'd love to create narrative but I don't think I've got it yet.
• backgrounds: I don't think I put enough attention into the backgrounds of my illustrations and I think that if I could improve those, it'd help to make my drawing look more finished and professional.
• Photoshop: I think I am improving but I need to learn textures and work more with odours and brushes.
• Finishing my illustrations: My idea of a finished illustration isn't good enough and I want to make mine more professional.

5 images that demonstrate my interest in illustration:

Personal work, Emma Bailey

Noisy alphabet, Tom Gauld 

Personal work, Chuck Groenink

Memories of Japan, Tsuzen Nakajima

Stephanie Graegin

5 Audiences

Book

.children's 0-5 - regular picture books

.children's 6-10 - my personal favourite these are the blank and white illustraions that I used to love about books before I "grew up" and the books no longer had illustrations inside. 

.Fantasy - its just such a classic genre what I enjoyed reading most as a child (and suppose now too).

.sci-fi - I'd love to make a kids sci-fi book there just blatantly isn't enough of them.

.educational - I'd also love to do an educational one about mental creatures (probably sea)

Evaluation

what learning have you inherited through this module and how effectively do you think you        have applied it? Consider differing approaches to        contextual/professional research?

I've gained an appreciation for the often tedious task of drawing the same character over and over again. I would often not do enough of this before (and I'm not sure I did it enough in this) but it's through repetitive drawing that you gain little epiphanies and sort out any little kinks.  

2.    What approaches to image making have you developed during this module and what                informed such ways of working?

3.       What strengths can you identify in your practice and how have/will you capitalise on these in    the future?

4.       What weaknesses can you identify in your practice and how will you address these in the          future?

5.       Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from        doing these?

Post 27th

Post 27th I intended to finish and colour the families and draw them all in front of their houses on one long street. I plan for this to be both printed A1 and for me to make it into a concertina book. I originally wanted to do ten families and do the back of the book as inside their houses or them doing hobbies but I think that I've been giving myself too much work as I've been viewing each family as one character rather than how it actually is five separate characters together. To make ten families I'd have to do too many characters for the time I have to do it in, especially if I'm going to make something with these characters.  

Character Sheets

Once I had finished with the drawings I compiled them into a character sheets. Then I edited them to be a bit cleaner and smoother. However When drawing I didn't put enough attention into how I'd be making character sheets so theres quite large discrepancies in the sheets which I would prefer to have made standard.

Fruit family

Alien family

Underwater family

Sun and Moon

Sun and Moon

I don't really like this page I found it difficult to create characters fro the sun and the moon. I ran into problems with the shine coming off from the sun as I was never happy with them until the finished one was put into profile. I think its better rounded as its less done while still  looking like a child's drawing  which is what I liked so much about the swirl on his face. The swirl works so well for his nose, it's what I would always do again and what makes him a character.The moon has been a much bigger problem as I can't ever have him head on without it being weird and the nose was a bit of a issue until I just gave him a little pointy one. The craters and the speckles saved him though and thankfully as the sun looks best from the side too they work well together but if i ever had to draw them from a different angle I'd be stuck.

Underwater family

The underwater family was really rather difficult as underwater is such a big category and I wasn't sure how to make the characters from there. I did some tests of doing them in different ways but in the end I decided to treat it like the fruit family and choose different marine life for each different member while making sure that'd it'd suit the shape of the character and work in both head on and from the side. 

Once I settled on which fish to use on which character I drew them out a few times like the others to get them to a standard I'd be happy with. I didn't put a lot of work into the pet in this one as I quite early on thought of using a sea pig which required no real development but I think works well as there is a large difference between the creatures I used for the family and a sea pig.

Alien family

I did the same for the alien family that I did for the fruit family but they took a little longer as there were more possibilities. The dad was pretty simple as he already had an archetype to follow and I wanted to have the aliens in some sort of spacesuit/jumpsuit so it wasn't too difficult for his outfit.

For the mother it was more difficult as I wanted her to have a more feminine version of the families outfit. I also put her horns/hair on top of her head to try and create a stronger distinction between genders. After talking about the alien family I realised that the baby didn't have to be a smaller version of the grown ups. So I tried drawing her as a grub and as an egg but she ended up working better as a grub like shape but with little arms and legs like a caterpillar. I gave her little black horns as well to give her more of a connection to the adults. The other thing I noted was that as she doesn't look like the others she can be easy to confuse with the pet so I think she should be shown  to be holding her to create a stronger sense of difference.

The boy was  simple enough as like his dad he already had a strong idea of what he was. I did however want to put him in short sleeves and shorts (like a playsuit) this suggests childhood really easily.I also had an epiphany about the horns, as the baby's are black and the adults are striped I thought it'd be good to have thick stripes on the boy. I liked the idea that it was like the rings on a tree trunk, that each stripe is a representation of age. The cat was my favourite character in this and she just came about from trying to subvert a normal cat and from talking to people about her.

This is a sheet of doodles that I did at a children's birthday party, I drew it in between the dad and the mum. This is where I jotted down some early ideas and worked a lot on the cat. I believe doodles are incredibly important for working out the simple aspects of characters without feeling sentimental or precious about them. However I think I should start recording them as if I don't show them it can look like I've just jumped to ideas from nowhere.

Fruit family

For the fruit family I wanted to do the most common ones to find in a fruit bowl as I loved the idea of having their car be the bowl. So I drew a pear mum, an apple dad, an orange boy, a grape baby and a banana pet. For each character I drew them out a couple of times until I reached a character I was happy enough to move onto the next one. Often this was after around four or five attempts but it could be more whenever the character needed more working out.

On the pear mum I tested drawing some clothes on her but I think that they detract from the  fruitness of her. With clothes she's not immediately recognisable as a pear so I decided to focus on having her being more like a pear. After looking at pears I noticed that they were often speckled so I used dots to show shading and to negate all that white space. I did this with the other fruits too but as I looked at their individual appearances they each have different ways of shading (lines for the apple, shine for the grape etc.).

I tried to draw apple dad without hair first off as he is an apple but this didn't convey his dadness so I drew on his big moustache and eyebrows. I also thought that if they are made of a different apple colour he could still be hairless like the rest.

With the boy I made use of the dotted look of oranges to give him freckles and I gave the baby a bib, as like the dad it needed something a little extra to reinforce what they are. 

Concept crit

In the concept crit we answered all the questions on the sheet and planned for exhibition.

As I was intending on creating one long street for the families to live on, it was suggested to me that I could make it into a concertina book so it would fold out beautifully. I also thought I could print out an A1 version to mount as well.

Presentation

When I made my presentation I wrote down all my evaluations of the past year and everything I wanted to say. This likely is part of the reason my presentation wasn't very visual. I interpreted the task as a personal review of the year, which is fine but I should have also included illustrators and an evaluation of how my work has progressed.

Initial sketches

for each of the creatures I wrote on my list I did an initial sketch of how I would do each family, their house and their form of transport. On the other page I wrote a list of all the things that would influence each family.  This was to get my first ideas down and to create a base to work from.